Grabbing your customers’ attention, keeping it, and ensuring that they are engaged with and enjoying your product is essential for success. Remember that customers don’t need to use your service, so you need to motivate, encourage, and educate them to do so.
User engagement, or customer engagement, is a study of user behavior—specifically, how customers interact with your service. User engagement involves the study of users’ time spent within your application, what features are popular, where users click, and the overall level of customer interaction.
Because this is so essential to product growth, we’ve compiled a list of the best resources related to user engagement advice, best practices, and tools. Whether you’re just beginning, or you already have an established client base, it’s never too late to start. Monitoring how customers engage with your product or service is essential for providing an enjoyable experience and keeping your customer interested. Keep reading to find out why customer engagement is so essential, starting with some of the basics, or jump down to any section that interests you most.
The case for user engagement analytics: beginners start here
Before we delve deep into ways of engaging with customers, let’s first look at why user engagement is important for you to understand, track, and apply to your business. These articles are great for beginners on the subject, and can help even more dedicated learners develop new user engagement strategies.
As a more broad analysis of user behavior, this article details and outlines specific processes and necessary steps to understand what metrics matter to your business, how to track them in a meaningful and productive way, and how to utilize the data drawn from these efforts to improve growth, retention, and overall engagement.
A basic introduction to the topic, including why it is important to actively think about, and how to start using customer engagement in your processes.
Outlining what engagement is, marketing guru Neil Patel delves into a variety of ways for you to think about how users engage with your content. He then expands to provide ways of understanding their behavior so that you can encourage engagement in a substantial way.
More than just explaining why measuring your user engagement is essential, this article actually helps you understand how to quantify your user engagement data in a way that is easy to understand, and that will allow you to apply the necessary adjustments to achieve success.
Understanding user engagement metrics
When it comes to measuring the interactivity of your users, less can often be more. Getting overwhelmed with information and tracking absolutely every detail can sometimes hinder your main goals, wasting precious time.
Instead, it’s important to understand what metrics and KPIs matter most to your business. Focus on tracking those key metrics, and ensure you apply the information you gather from this data to improve your business. To find out about the most important metrics, read on below.
This article lists the top ten metrics to track for mobile applications. While many apply to other types of services as well, this is perfect for those running mobile apps and looking for the metrics to measure for improving user engagement.
While targeted to eCommerce applications, the 9 metrics listed here should be considered for any SaaS/subscription based business. This article outlines each one separately, explaining what the metric is and “what it solves for,” so you know how to apply the data you are tracking.
Engagement with users differs across various platforms, such as website and mobile. This article outlines the three key metrics to track that are unique to mobile apps, giving you a leg up for interacting with your mobile users.
Simple and to the point, this article lists 7 key metrics to measure to understand engaged users and retention. It has details on understanding session length, session frequency, and time in app, as well as how to bring this information together for tangible results. Be sure to add these to the metrics you’re tracking!
As the journal for all things SEO, it’s no wonder this post is super-detailed. For each metric, it provides information on what the metric is, including key terms and their definitions. On top of this, the article has a section on “how to track” and “how to optimize/improve” for each metric. Whether you’re an SEO beginner or expert, this article has something to offer!
As a road map to get you out of the hedges, this article covers all of the typical user engagement mistakes—so you can avoid them! You’ll learn how to track active users, focus on metrics that matter to you rather than getting overwhelmed, and increase your users’ session duration.
For user engagement strategy centered on social media, this article is the perfect fit. While there are some crossovers, the metrics for analyzing social media engagement can be slightly different than other platforms.
With important phrases bolded, key metrics highlighted, and a range of beginner tips that are good to keep in mind from the start, this aptly-named article serves as a great introduction to customer engagement.
Clean, simple, and effective, this blog post lists 10 essential metrics to measure to effectively monitor user engagement. The great thing about this article is it has a “How to Analyze Effectively” subsection for each metric that gives you more direct instruction on how to use this metric. Knowing—or at least thinking about—how you’ll use the data afterwards will help ensure you track the metrics in a useful way.
How to measure user engagement the right way
Now that you know which KPIs are most important, you need to know how to properly measure these metrics. From general tips to step-by-step guides, the resources below are sure to help walk you through the process of how to measure user engagement in order to get meaningful results.
Depending on the type of business you have, some strategies will be more or less effective, but there are more than enough tactics to help you think about ways to measure the relevant KPIs to ensure success.
A step-by-step guide that walks you through the process of ensuring you track daily active users utilizing metrics that actually matter. Formatted as a linear step-by-step process of what metrics to track, how to properly measure these metrics, and how to analyze and apply the data, the educational approach of this article makes it easily accessible and transferable to a variety of other KPIs.
This article gets right to the point, and helps walk you through the process of tracking metrics. It starts with a basic outline of what user engagement is, why it matters, and leads into how to go about tracking, measuring, and analyzing this data. This is a good starting point for anyone looking to learn how to measure customer interactions.
Highlighting the importance of analyzing data across platforms, this article gets at the heart of the way users actually use your platforms as opposed to how they are intended to be used. While you may expect users to utilize one main platform, they often switch between various platforms when using the same app for various different reasons—learn why here.
Although this article focuses on WordPress websites, it walks you through the process of how to measure customer engagement. It outlines a few metrics to track, and how to go about doing so.
If you’re looking for a detailed analysis of user engagement and best practices for how to measure it, this slideshare is for you. Created by Mounia Lalmas (Research Director at Spotify, London) and Liangjie Hong (Head of Data Science at Etsy, New York), this is geared towards people experienced in user engagement and looking to learn more on the topic.
Covering why user engagement matters, how to keep customers engaged, and how to measure this engagement, this article is a brief but clear article outlining how to measure user engagement properly.
This blog post directly answers the question “how do you measure user engagement?” It covers the essential point that the metrics and strategies you deploy will vary depending on the channel you are using, and offers tips on how to approach different platforms.
Tomer Sharon, Head of User Research & Metrics at Goldman Sachs, delves into ways of measuring Key Experience Indicators in a way that is direct, simple, and informative. It walks you through the process in a way that can be followed for many situations.
Best user engagement tools and software
Now that you know what to track and how to measure it, you’re probably eager to get started. The next step is to find a user engagement tool that suits your needs. Whether you want a convenient, simple, intuitive process that is easy to use, or a comprehensive, detailed, integrative customer engagement software with all the bells and whistles, you’re sure to find something for you below.
With ‘product analytics for the digital era’, Amplitude is a forward-thinking company that provides comprehensive user analytics. The Behavioral Platform and Growth Engine are specifically designed to help companies understand their users, improve on product experiences, and grow their businesses. They believe firmly in their four-step process: track, understand, accelerate, and grow.
As a popular analytics software, Google Analytics is easily accessible and makes tracking and monitoring the essential metrics simple. As a free product for any level of user, it doesn’t allow you to identify as many metrics or variables as some other software. It’s reliable however, and will work on your mobile device as well.
Heap offers automated web, mobile, and cloud user engagement KPI tracking and analysis. This lets you leave much of the analytics to Heap so you can focus on what the data tells you. While automation can be extremely convenient and time-saving, you may lose some control over the process.
With an emphasis on customer diversity, Localytics looks to use analytics to understand a company’s users, including what they want out of the service. This helps them identify the various types of users and their level of interaction, and allows them to use this behavioral information to improve their business.
Optimizely considers itself an ‘experimentation platform,’ providing the tools necessary to test, learn, and grow. With a user-friendly approach, this is ideal for beginners.
Mobile and app user engagement best practices
While many best practices apply across multiple platforms (website, mobile, social media, etc.), mobile and app user engagement poses different problems and benefits. More than that, the user experience is often much different on a mobile app.
It’s important to consider this when analyzing mobile applications so that you truly understand customer engagement. Downloading, accessing, and onboarding with an app are all slightly different than on websites, even in mobile form. To understand how customer engagement is different with mobile apps and for best practices, be sure to check out the resources below.
Complete doesn’t quite cut it. For literally everything you can think of when it comes to mobile analytics—including a variety of user engagement related areas—this is your go-to resource. Get a crash course on mobile engagement best practices, examine case studies to learn from others, get suggestions on some of the best tools to use, and browse a list of over 50 quality resources about mobile analytics.
These are 7 great techniques that anyone serious about user engagement should keep in their toolkit. Focusing on the onboarding process, this outlines seven essentials for ensuring you create a process that connects users to your app, gets them invested in what it can offer, and motivates them to engage and return.
Just as the title says, these are intelligent tips and practices that cover the entire user lifecycle for your app. It takes you through from download, to onboarding, to engagement, to retention, so you understand how to tackle every step of the way.
Straight to the point, this article outlines seven of the best practices to follow for engaging users on a mobile app. It covers a number of topics, including deep linking, social sharing, and app tracking. It also reminds you to update to ensure users have a clean, smooth, and enticing experience.
This article is great for a beginner looking to increase mobile app customer engagement. It contains some great advice to get you started when trying to think about how to engage your users.
With both user experience and technical application tips, this article covers a number of useful techniques to use for yourself. Featuring ‘key points’ for each metric that matters, this article summarizes the main points and provides new ways of thinking about these problems, helping you quickly get the main takeaways for each point.
First acknowledging that engaged customers are central to your product, Amplitude highlights the importance of mastering user engagement to achieve results that matter. Learn about the three games of engagement, how to activate new users, and how to increase the ‘stickiness’ of the users you have.
Following a chronological order, it walks through the steps you should consider when it comes to engaging your users. From when users open your app to the time they are a daily user, this post goes into extreme detail and breaks down some steps that are often forgotten.
Mastering website user engagement (when mobile isn’t as important)
While everyone seems to want an app for their service these days, for many products, services, and businesses, a mobile app doesn’t necessarily make sense or provide the same value. It’s important to focus on what matters most, and what is practical for your line of business.
If your digital presence is centered on your website, you should devote more resources here. For getting the best tips, advice, and best practices for improving user engagement on your website, we’ve got you covered.
This comprehensive article is an ideal resource for anyone looking for specific insights for improving user engagement on their website. It explains what user engagement is, outlines various types of engagement, and provides 10 essential tips for increasing engagement. As a bonus, it discusses how to develop an overall strategy and which metrics you need to measure.
Twelve of the top quick-hit musts to boost user engagement on your website. Rather than focusing on specific details and metrics, this article provides broad tips and strategies that will work for many different types of businesses driven by user engagement.
Brought to you by Wix, this article assumes you may be wanting to create a website, and rightfully starts off with designing a website to foster user engagement. This way, it covers you from the minute you publish while also providing practices for maintaining engagement consistently.
This article breaks down the three user engagement games you could be playing— attention, transaction, or productivity—to drive success (you may even be playing more than one!). It identifies what these three games are, and helps outline metrics that are relevant to you depending on the types of areas you need to focus on. As a big-picture article, this helps give you an understanding of what metrics will matter to your desired outcomes.
Just as useful as focusing on things that you should do, this article focuses on common pitfalls that people fall in to when trying to perfect their user engagement. These include overloading users with information, not remaining relevant and current, and focusing on business over the community of users.
With technical tips, overall marketing strategy advice, and more, these ten tactics for improving user engagement are applicable to running any website. Working to reduce technical aspects such as page load speeds, having an easily accessible search box, and improving site navigation can be just as important as content when it comes to customer interactivity.
Covers eight strategies to help get more engagement from your customers. Learn technical necessities and tactics for fostering more interaction from your customers, such as making content shareable, connecting your audience quickly to related content, and creating contests that foster engagement.
Covering a number of add-ons and enhancements for your basic website, these are great things to consider adding to increase user engagement. This article covers plugins that can be added to enhance the experience of your customers, incentivization programs that reward active users, and live chats that can ensure users aren’t turned away by slow response times or lack of information.
Case studies: user engagement strategies that work
While the resources above have focused on user engagement in a theoretical way, sometimes real-world examples are the best way to learn. Below are a number of customer engagement case studies by various companies to help you see what problems others have faced, their tactics for handling it, and how those strategies worked. While they may not all apply to your niche, they are useful, and can help teach you lessons that come from real life experience.
This collection of videos and slideshows comes from people working in various roles directly involved in customer engagement. With insight into how these businesses and experts achieve user engagement success, this comprehensive list of resources is great for product developers in any industry.
With both an explanation of the case study and the main takeaways, this is a great resource for understanding how different features or engagement strategies can make a major impact on your customers’ enjoyment of your product.
Ten brief campaigns that show creative ways of fostering interactive customers. While they may not apply directly to your business, they can give you new ways of thinking about interacting with users and increasing stickiness.
Providing context, explaining the unique business situation, and outlining the best solutions, this article is a great learning tool for those looking to improve user engagement.
A quick examination of how four major brands leveraged social media to increase engagement with their users.
Avito used the Amplitude Behavior Platform for high-quality behavioral analytics with the aim of boosting efficiency and convenience, and ultimately to improve user retention. See how Amplitude helped reduce acquisition costs by a multiple of 3 and increased retention by 100%.
Whether you’re a fashionista or not, this brief case study is a great example of a good marketing campaign. It offers advice on how to track metrics, and shows results to help you craft your own campaigns to boost user engagement.
Top user engagement influencers and how to follow them
If articles aren’t enough for you and you want immediate updates about user engagement and the broader industry of digital marketing, why get it anywhere other than from the professionals and experts in their field? While there are many customer engagement influencers you need to follow, we’ve tried to narrow it down to the very best.
Below is our list of the top eight user engagement influencers for you to follow on Twitter.
As a leading digital marketing influencer with over 316,000 followers, Neil Patel posts regularly about SEO, content marketing, PPC, social media, e-Commerce, email marketing, and other strategies related to digital businesses and campaigns.
CEO of MktgNutz, Pam Moore is an avid digital marketing influencer. She focuses on social media and helping small businesses improve on their engagement with customers, their marketing efforts, and their overall success.
The Founder of SparkToro, and previous face of Moz.com‘s content, Rand has been a leading influencer and face of all things digital, including specific strategies.
As an entrepreneur passionate about helping other entrepreneurs succeed, Kim Garst devotes her channel to impacting businesses through digital marketing, SEO, and user engagement strategies and advice.
As a self-proclaimed ‘product development nut’ at Amplitude, you can find everything to do with behavioral analytics, including user engagement, on John’s feed. He’s also always posting about the industry and what’s happening, so you can keep in touch with that as well!
Mari Smith is one of the leading experts on Facebook and social media marketing. She posts regularly about the best practices and strategies, as well as speaking to her challenges and successes in the industry.
Named a Top 7 Marketing Influencer by Forbes, Brian D. Evans is constantly sharing posts about how to engage users and other digital marketing initiatives.
#14 on Forbes’s list of top 50 social media influencers, Jeff Bullas posts constantly about all things digital marketing, including customer engagement and retention.
Now that you know the basics of what user engagement is, which metrics are important, how to track them, and what to use to track these metrics, you’re ready to get started. Pick the tool from the list above, take note of the tips that most apply to your business, and start putting them into practice.
As you develop and grow, learn more about user engagement and the overall customer experience, ensuring that you provide a service that motivates users to return and interact with your product. Once you have a handle on the topic of user engagement, put these tips into practice and see how you grow month-to-month.
Ultimately, there is no tried and true method that is sure to provide success, but by taking some of the best tips above, you can start to experiment with what will work best for you. With advice from leading experts, you should be able to see a substantial improvement after putting this knowledge to use.
